30 Comments

May I ask a question? I’ve noticed that in your example sentence 彼女には美的感覚が全くない there is no -na connecting 美的 to 感覚. I suppose that’s because 美的感覚can be considered one large word, right?

But then, I’ve also found this sentence in my texbook: そこまでやるのは自殺的行為だ。In his case, 自殺的行為 doesn’t seem to be ‘one large word’ as I can’t find it in a dictionary. So, is it sometimes possible to omit -na?

Sorry to say but that’s completely wrong. Although the genitive in Classical Chinese was 之 zhi, 的 (pronounced “de”, which isn’t で but sort of like “dø;” in old Chinese it was pronounced “dak” or “duhk” and thus became “teki” in Japanese ) was still used as an attributive marker and was passed to Japanese and given a Japanese-style grammar. Basically 的 means “of” and な is what is used in Japanese to attach it to words.

@risu
Thank you for your comment. I don’t know any Chinese so I can’t answer the similarity or difference between Japanese and Chinese but the equivalent English word depends on the words, I think.
~ic/ ish, wise, etc.

@Top-san
Thank you for the comment!
All the words with 的 in this lesson are pretty common. So we use all of them. And there are lots more.. As I wrote in the lesson, you can’t just add 的 to all the nouns. So it will be faster to memorize the words with 的. For example we always use 積極的、消極的 and we don’t usually use just 積極 or 消極 without 的.

”Can you use 好き in this case too?”
魔法好き→It may work for a person who looooves magic like Harry Potter!
~好き=~ zuki is another word which works for certain nouns.
(things you like) + 好き(=zuki)
Ex.子供好き=kodomo zuki = a person who likes children
コーヒー好き=koohii zuki = coffee lover